The boy hesitated a moment, glanced casually over the west bank of the stream and then lowered his eyes to the deck.
“I was ordered to do so,” he said in a moment.
“Ordered to disable our motors and cut our cable?” demanded Case indignantly. “Don’t you know that you might have been the cause of our death? Is everything you have told me to-day just as true as the fairy tales you told us that night? You may as well be frank.”
Again the boy hesitated. To Case it seemed that he was listening for some sound or signal from the shore.
“Will you tell me,” continued Case, “who it was that ordered you to cut our cable and disable our motors?”
The boy shook his head. His manner was now anxious and uneasy, and Case turned his own eyes toward the shore which was being watched so closely.
“I can’t give you the name of my employers,” the boy finally said.
“Then tell me this,” insisted Case. “Why did the men who ordered you to do the work want it done?”
“I don’t know,” was the brief reply.
“I presume,” Case went on, “that you would have destroyed the Rambler with a stick of dynamite if you had been told to do so.”